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I am searching a complement of this tuto How to update Thunderbird 78 to 91 on Ubuntu 20.04?.

I install/uninstall snap 91 and apt 78 many times. I always recover my data with 78, not with 91

How to recover old data of apt 78 with snap 91 ? Where are stocked the data of 91 ?
I try to modify the .thunderbird/profiles.ini unsuccessfully.

After uninstalling 91, I have a second icon of TB on my app list but not in snap list

Thanks

Estay
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1 Answers1

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This answer addresses the procedure for migrating any apt version of Thunderbird to a snap version. I've tested this on several desktops running various versions of Ubuntu.

If you're running the latest apt version of Thunderbird the exporting procedure on the Mozilla web site will not work. I believe TB v91 is the last release before Ubuntu shifted to the snap distro method and the export function is not in that release.

I'm no Thunderbird expert but I have fooled with this some and think I have a migration procedure that works reliably well.

For simplicity sake I am going to assume that your profile is username.default and not the random-generated-number.default name created when Thunderbird was first started. If this is not the case, it's easy enough to rename the default folder and edit profile.ini

From the Ubuntu file manager, use the copy to command to copy the current Thunderbird settings to a backup folder. Do NOT use the terminal shell cp command. This can be done on the local machine or on a remote desktop and then later copied to the target using filezilla.

Everything you need is in

$HOME/.thunderbird

NOTE: It's always best to back up before doing any destructive operation.

Remove the old apt version of Thunderbird:

sudo apt-get remove thunderbird

Install the snap version of Thunderbird:

sudo snap install thunderbird

To create the files needed to run Thunderbird: Start and then exit Thunderbird

Again, using the file manager and not a terminal shell cp command do a copy to: from the contents of your backup directory to the Thunderbird snap directory:

Example:

From:

$HOME/backups/thunderbird/username.default and profile.ini

Where the above directory is where you saved a backup of your Thunderbird settings

To:

$HOME/snap/thunderbird/common/.thunderbird/

Edit profile.ini to point to the correct directory:

[InstallFDC34C9F024745EB]
Default=username.default

[Profile0]
Name=default
IsRelative=1
Path=username.default
Default=1


[General]
StartWithLastProfile=1
Version=2

Start Thunderbird.

Thunderbird should come up fully migrated and at the latest snap version of the app.

This procedure works fine on 22.04.1 LTS

jones0610
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